Infectious giggles and warmed hearts
Damon Smith chooses some feelgood films to brighten your day
Booksmart
(15, 98 mins)
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video and from 24 January on Netflix
School’s out for the summer but life lessons about sisterly solidarity and abusing the good nature of a teddy bear never end in the raucous rites-of-passage comedy Booksmart.
Actress Olivia Wilde identifies herself as a high achiever with a riotous feature film directorial debut, strutting confidently down the same corridors of beautifully articulated teen angst as Clueless and Mean Girls.
A sorority of four female scriptwriters cram in a dizzying array of pithy and potty-mouthed one-liners between some deeply touching moments of self-reflection and realisation.
The heartfelt hilarity is delivered with genuine warmth and grin-inducing sincerity by the double-act of Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein.
Pitch Perfect 2
(12, 110 mins)
Screening on Film4 on 24 January
and 28 January, and streaming on Netflix
In the sequel Pitch Perfect actress Elizabeth Banks nestles in the director’s chair for an uproarious second outing and she confidently conducts a choir of familiar faces through soaring musical mashups and pitch-slapping putdowns.
Screenwriter Kay Cannon enforces the message of femme power by contriving a spectacular fall from grace for the Barden Bellas to inspire her plucky heroines to rediscover their sisterly solidarity.
Beyonce’s anthemic Run The World (Girls) is a fitting opener for one medley of redemption, emphasising that while these girls wanna have fun, they won’t do so at the expense of friendships or their careers.
Superbad (15, 113 mins)
Streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video
Tumultuous years, when hormone-addled teenagers cling onto the security of their high school cliques before striking out on their own, have been exploited endlessly for laughs and tears.
Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Superbad is a surprisingly sentimental story of two socially inept friends (Jonah Hill, Michael Cera), who live in each other’s back pockets but must now acknowledge their diverging futures.
Greg Mottola’s film ricochets at full pelt between gross-out humour and touching self-reflection and Hill and Cera are an entertaining double-act.